Free The Best Horror Stories of Arthur Conan Doyle by Arthur Doyle Page B

light to it, I will see how Walker feels this morning.”
    He left me, but was back in an instant with a dreadful face.
    â€œHe’s gone!” he cried hoarsely.
    The words sent a thrill of horror through me. I stood with the lamp in my hand, glaring at him.
    â€œYes, he’s gone!” he repeated. “Come and look!”
    I followed him without a word, and the first thing that I saw as I entered the bedroom was Walker himself lying huddled on his bed in the grey flannel sleeping suit in which I had helped to dress him on the night before.
    â€œNot dead, surely!” I gasped.
    The Doctor was terribly agitated. His hands were shaking like leaves in the wind.
    â€œHe’s been dead for some hours.”
    â€œWas it fever?”
    â€œFever! Look at his foot!”
    I glanced down and a cry of horror burst from my lips. One foot was not merely dislocated, but was turned completely round in a most grotesque contortion.
    â€œGood God!” I cried. “What can have done this?”
    Severall lay his hand upon the dead man’s chest.
    â€œFeel here,” he whispered.
    I placed my hand at the same spot. There was no resistance. The body was absolutely soft and limp. It was like pressing a sawdust doll.
    â€œThe breast-bone is gone,” said Severall in the same awed whisper. “He’s broken to bits. Thank God that he had the laudanum. You can see by his face that he died in his sleep.”
    â€œBut who could have done this?”
    â€œI’ve had about as much as I can stand,” said the Doctor, wiping his forehead. “I don’t know that I’m a greater coward than my neighbours, but this gets beyond me. If you’re going out to the
Gamecock—”
    â€œCome on!” said I, and off we started. If we did not run it was because each of us wished to keep up the last shadow of his self-respect before the other. It was dangerous in a light canoe on that swollen river, but we never paused to give the matter a thought. He bailing and I paddling we kept her above water, and gained the deck of the yacht. There, with two hundred yards of water between us and this cursed island we felt that we were our own men once more.
    â€œWe’ll go back in an hour or so,” said he. “But we need have a little time to steady ourselves. I wouldn’t have had the niggers see me as I was just now for a year’s salary.”
    â€œI’ve told the steward to prepare breakfast. Then we shall go back,” said I. “But in God’s name, Doctor Severall, what do you make of it all?”
    â€œIt beats me, beats me clean. I’ve heard of Voodoo devilry, and I’ve laughed at it with the others. But that poor old Walker, a decent, God-fearing, nineteenth century, Primrose-League Englishman should go under like this without a whole bone inhis body—it’s given me a shake, I won’t deny it. But look there, Meldrum, is that hand of yours mad or drunk, or what is it?”
    Old Patterson, the oldest man of my crew, and as steady as the Pyramids, had been stationed in the bows with a boat-hook to fend off the drifting logs which came sweeping down with the current. Now he stood with crooked knees, glaring out in front of him, and one forefinger stabbing furiously at the air.
    â€œLook at it!” he yelled. “Look at it!”
    And at the same instant we saw it.
    A huge black tree trunk was coming down the river, its broad glistening back just lapped by the water. And in front of it—about three feet in front—arching upwards like the figure-head of a ship, there hung a dreadful face, swaying slowly from side to side. It was flattened, malignant, as large as a small beer-barrel, of a faded fungoid colour, but the neck which supported it was mottled with a dull yellow black. As it flew past the
Gamecock
in the swirl of the waters I saw two immense coils roll up out of some great hollow in the tree, and the villainous head